Theories of word naming interact with spelling-sound consistency

Abstract

In a previous study (E. Strain, K. Patterson, & M. S. Seidenberg, 1995), the authors concluded that word naming is characterized by an interaction between spelling-sound typicality and word imageability, thus implicating a role for word meaning in the naming process. J. Monaghan and A. W. Ellis (2002) reject E. Strain et al.'s conclusion, arguing that it is age of acquisition (AoA) and not imageability that interacts with spelling-sound typicality. In this article, the authors question their alternative interpretation (a) by raising a number of conceptual and methodological issues germane to this debate and (b) by presenting new data that confirm a significant interaction between spelling-sound typicality and imageability in word-naming latencies, an interaction that is reliable when word AoA is controlled in a regression analysis.